Last month I had the opportunity to host a web seminar — Sure-Fire Contract Compliance Strategies — in which Qualcomm revealed its approach for successfully launching and expanding a global contract and compliance management initiative. 

Today, Qualcomm uses a common contract lifecycle management (CLM) system to manage over 30,000 contracts enterprisewide — from basic supplier product and service contracts to complex customer, partner, and intellectual property agreements. More than 600 users across functional and divisional lines use the common system, ensuring contracting standards and speeding contract creation and reporting cycles.

Debbie Adams, Senior Project Manager, at the global wireless communications giant, reports that this initiative has also reduced contracting risks and improved corporate compliance: We participate in the SOX monthly close process. Many of our divisional finance teams are now going paperless and they are putting their quarterly close data into [the CLM] system. We are running some of the quarterly close processes directly out of the contract management system.”

What’s the secret to Qualcomm’s contract management success? Debbie attributes it to the following factors:

• Centralized oversight with decentralized ownership: “We use a center-led structure that has centralized oversight with decentralized ownership. The divisional players feel that they have a great deal of ownership in their own data. And executive management is getting what they need out of the system through the centralized team.”
• Establish an independent program management team: “Key to our success has been having an independent program management team that is comprised of project management and business systems type personnel. We are not tied into any given division, but we are aligned with our sponsor – Corporate Legal.”
• Develop a strong supplier relationship and select a capable tool: “Another key to our success has been staying tapped in with our solution provider. Our team has learned the tool and becoming power users. We’ve learned how to customize to meet our business processes.”
• Secure consensus through steering committee: “Our steering committee now consists of representatives from all the divisions and functions — from procurement, sales, contracting, legal, and finance. This structure has provided the various divisions a forum to get together and share practices.”
• Mentor power users: “My [program management] team is a four-person team and we support about 600 users of the contract management system. We couldn’t do that effectively without mentoring power users. We mentor power users and group administrators in each of the divisions. And that’s really helped us build some expertise and a local support infrastructure.”
• Audit and measure: “My four-person team does audit. We provide metrics. We scorecard our divisions and how they are complying with core requirements. We provide those scorecards on a quarterly basis to our CIO, our CFO, and our General Counsel. So the divisions know that executive management is paying attention. And [the divisions] look forward to having good scorecards.”

Debbie says Qualcomm has been able to sustain (and expand) its contract management initiative by ensuring responsiveness to the needs of individual divisions:”While they all follow the agreed upon business rules, they all have their divisional needs. We recognize their uniqueness and support it by providing division-based reports. Reports are so key. Now that we’ve built this large enterprise system, [internal] customers want to get a ROI, it’s kind of like getting money out of the bank for them. They put all this time into getting all this data, so we help them with reports. We provide activity reports, compliance reports, and other reports they need to measure and improve their business.” 

Other organizations considering or in the midst of a contract and compliance management improvement initiative would be wise to emulate Qualcomm’s approaches. To hear more about Qualcomm’s contract management transformation, access the free webinar replay here.